Response to Bean's "Writing Comments on Students' Papers"

For the most part, I found myself responding well to John C. Bean’s “Writing Comments on Students’ Papers” which begins: “Perhaps nothing involves us so directly in the messiness of teaching writing as our attempts to comment on our students’ essays”.  Bean’s article is certainly readable and his ideas were easy to follow. He articulates how easy it is, as a teacher, to forget that there is a person behind each essay that is being read (sometimes ripped apart for errors) and graded.  It’s also easy to forget, that as a writer, a strong feeling of vulnerability usually accompanies allowing someone to read your work—especially if that person is in a position to judge you. Bean advises teachers to be more mindful of the comments that they write on students papers because the worst comments can insult and even dehumanize a student.

I laughed out loud at some of the interviewed students’ responses to marginal comments. When a teacher wrote “Be more specific”, one response was “You be more specific”. Another student responded to the comment, “You haven’t really thought this through” with “How do you know what I thought?” It’s funny because when you really think about it, how illogical are these comments! How do you know what the student was thinking? (You don’t!)

The conclusions of the study, which Bean quoted, showed that negative comments “stifle further attempts at writing”. So how can we help students? Bean writes that it helps to point out what the writer is doing well. However, you can’t fabricate anything. The comments are only helpful if they are “truthful, and they must be very specific”. Bean goes on to note that current brain research stresses the correlation between emotions and learning. Fear, anxiety, and anger are learning blockers. Teachers should strive to build their students’ hope and confidence.

One way to improve the quality of comments is to use “mitigating” comments which frame criticism in a positive way. Bean gives two examples of end comments; I immediately responded positively to the mitigated comment. Therefore, it did not surprise me to learn that Smith’s study showed that students preferred mitigated comments as well. Bean writes, “To improve our techniques for commenting on our students’ papers, then, we need to remember our purpose, which is not to point out everything wrong with the paper but to facilitate improvement”. He proposes that teachers play two roles: at the drafting stage, teachers should be coaches. It is not until a student turns in a final draft that a teacher’s role shifts to that of a judge. Therefore, comments should guide revision, and comments should not appear until a late stage rough draft is produced. Commenting too early can interfere with creation of a good draft. Another alternative to commenting on late stage drafts is to allow for rewrites of final drafts.

Bean asserts that commenting in this way (to prompt revision) helps to change a teacher’s view as reader. He says, “You begin seeing yourself as responding to rather than correcting a set of papers”. I can see that reflected in the examples of marginal comments that Bean provides. Many of his comments are questions rather than statements. It conveys this idea of being a coach because it gives the sense that a conversation is taking place between the reader and the writer.

I also agree with Bean’s idea that in a rough draft, you don’t need to comment on everything and can limit your comments to a few things that the writer needs to work on. Teachers should read “for ideas rather than for errors”. Bean advises that you should coach through higher level concerns and then, after a good, successful draft is produced, for lower level concerns like sentence level errors such as spelling and grammar. I think that this is a great idea that benefits both students and teachers. If there are global issues, why bother correcting spelling errors?

Bean only lost me when he got to the section that explained his policy on “minimal marking” of sentence level errors. He says that it is most beneficial when students are told there are errors but must find and correct them themselves. Bean writes, “How high I raise the grade depends on how successful the student is in reducing the number of sentence errors”. Here, a teacher either puts a certain number of checkmarks to indicate how many errors are in a certain sentence, or the teacher simply states that there are errors somewhere in the paper. This is much too vague! And, it’s not helpful! I don’t agree with this policy at all. It seems like a waste of time for a student who will most likely end up scouring their paper for errors and second guessing every detail of their writing. I think that pointing out the error creates a learning experience. Furthermore, this policy assumes that all of the students are at the same level of understanding when it comes to style and mechanics. It’s just not likely that this is true…

Otherwise, I really enjoyed this article and I think that I took away some great ideas. I think this will really influence how I respond to students’ papers in the future.

Regarding the digital tools, I think that some of these are really great, and I look forward to using them in the future. However, I don’t know that any that I looked at would benefit this project. I like the idea of using Wix as a home for our collaborative project. I have an idea for my personal contribution, but I’m still working out the details.

Response to Elbow and Voice

Peter Elbow mentions a few goals that he hopes his essay “Reconsiderations: Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” achieves. He hopes that the information that he provides will help his audience embrace contraries and step outside of either/or thinking. He asserts that readings can be read in two ways: through the lens of voice and also reading them through the lens of “text” or not-voice”. Elbow writes that by accepting both/and into our methodology it allows us to adopt contrary stances toward voice.

Elbow begins the essay by mentioning that while the 1960’s saw a boom in the idea of getting voice into writing and then was immediately followed by critiques about voice in writing, not much has been said about the topic lately. He writes, “I see a kind of stalemate about voice in writing”.

                Interestingly, Elbow notes that most writing used to occur in the classroom and at work, but now that the internet is a staple, this is no longer true. Writers are not only writing for a judging authority anymore; they are writing for strangers now.

                Elbow goes on to discuss reasons for (and reasons for not) attending voice in texts. He says, “This conflict about voice in our field echoes a much older conflict about the self in language”. As far as his reasons for attending, he notes that voice can be described in terms of style and that can be very helpful to students. Also, readers may enjoy and connect to the writing more because they feel like they can relate to it and, it can feel less intimidating.

                His arguments for not attending include the notion that ignoring voice is necessary for good reading because students improve their ability to analyze. Also, avoidance of voice can be a powerful tool. Elbow notes that sometimes writers don’t want to have their presence felt by the reader.

                I feel that this article gave me a much better understanding of the argument. And in terms of the final project, I missed the last class, but I got an idea of what was discussed by some of my classmates. So far, I like the direction that this revised idea is heading toward.

Blog 2: A Response to Sommers and Yancey

Sommers and "Responding to Student Writing":

In “Responding to Student Writing”, Nancy Sommers addresses the issue of teacher’s comments on student’s writing. She mentions that comments are the most used but least understood method for response. The purpose of comments is to motivate a student to revise their work or do something different for the next assignment, yet Sommers feels that vague or confusing comments do not lead to the constructive criticism that a student needs in order to improve.    

Sommers conducted a year-long study that led to two interesting findings concerning teacher’s comments on student’s papers. The first is that commentary can take attention away from a student’s purpose in writing and turn the attention toward the teacher’s purpose in commenting. This means that when a student reads comments and prepares to revise a paper, they oftentimes make changes that the teacher wants, not changes that they, as the writer, deem necessary.

Next, Sommers looks at how commentary can become confusing to a student. Sometimes interlinear comments and marginal comments are contradictory. A student is being told to edit and develop new material at the same time.

Sommers’s second finding is that most comments are not text specific and can be interchangeable. Here is where we see such comments as: “think about your audience”, “avoid the passive”, and “be clear”. These are no more than generalities and abstract demands; there is no specific advice or strategies being offered to the student. In this case, revision becomes a guessing game.

The challenge then, Sommers writes, is to give reason for revision; show the student his or her potential for development; be specific. She goes on to mention that the problem most likely arises due to poor training. Teachers, for the most part, are not trained in response to students during teacher-training and writing workshops. According to Sommers, “The problem is that most of us as teachers of writing have been trained to read and interpret literary texts for meaning, but, unfortunately, we have not been trained to act upon the same set of assumptions in reading student texts as we follow in reading literary texts”. Therefore, when reading a student’s work, we read with a bias and that bias determines how we comprehend what is being read. Changes must be made in the way that teachers are trained and the way that teachers comment on student work. To not make such changes would be doing a disservice to teachers and students alike.

 

Yancey “On Reflection”:

In “On Reflection”, Yancey focuses her interest on reflection as “a means of going beyond the text to include a sense of the ongoing conversations that text enters into”. She calls for a using student talk differently so that students can participate as agents of their own learning.

After reading the article, this is what I learned about reflection:

·         It is self-assessment which is oriented to the gap between intention and accomplishment.

·         It entails projection or goal setting.

·         Reflection, according to Yancey is “the process by which we know what we have accomplished and by which we articulate accomplishment” and, it is also “the product of those processes.

·         Its purpose is to provide insight.

·         Reflection provides a means of bringing practice and theory together.

·         It is habitual and learned.

·         Reflection requires both kinds of thinking: scientific and spontaneous.

·         Language is critical for reflection.

·         Finding the “problem” is a key feature and is also the first critical step.

·         Reflection is a social process, but is also an individual one.

·         Reflection is rhetorical: “by reflecting on our work, we theorize our own practices” and we come to know, understand, and improve our work.

·         It is both a process and a product.

·         Reflection is “not only aside the drafts, but within them”.

 

On the Final Project:

I missed class last week, but after looking over the collaborative notes I feel that I would be most interested in working on the writer’s handbook. I agree that it might be better to write for teachers. I also think that I would prefer to have an analog version.